


Salvation | Damnation

by wandering_gypsy_feet



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Post 1x10, Rescue Missions, and karen is bae, frank does frank things, kastle - Freeform, true love motherfuckers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 13:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14165946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandering_gypsy_feet/pseuds/wandering_gypsy_feet
Summary: “I knew you would come for me,” she whispers, going to wrap her arms around his neck and bringing his forehead down to touch hers. It reminds her of the smell of blood on cold steel, but this is not then. They are home. They are safe. “I told them that you were coming. I knew you would. I knew you would.”“I'm always gonna come for you,” he replies, closing his eyes. Those words too, call back to that day and so she pulls him closer.“You have always been my salvation, Frank Castle, never my damnation,” she tells him and he looks down at her. The look in his dark eyes is about to set her on fire and this is the moment that will change everything, her instincts are telling her.My first Kastle fic, a one shot of what might happen.





	Salvation | Damnation

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all, so I binged The Punisher in like 3 days and now my heart and soul belongs to these two. So this is to dip my toes into the fandom, and to see if my muse has any ideas between now and season 2.
> 
> Reviews are love, and sharing is even better!

“He’s going to come for you, you know,” she laughs, with blood bubbling up in her lungs. She coughs it out, splattering it on the floor. The men standing in front of her exchange glances, but they don’t say anything. They weren’t speaking English before, so she has no idea if they understand her, but even if they don’t, they know that she should be sobbing, not laughing. 

 

“Who?” One asks and she hold back a smile. **“Who?”** He repeats, grabbing her by her hair and yanking her head back. She looks up at him with malice. 

 

“You’re just the fall men,” she shakes her head. “You don’t know, do you? You don’t even know who I am?”

 

“Fuck you,” he lets her go and yells something in a foreign language at his counterparts. Karen doesn’t need to translate it. It doesn’t matter. He’s coming and they’ll know soon enough. She spits up more blood, and winces in pain. 

 

“Who is coming?” This time it is an older man that grabs her chin and forces her to meet his eyes. She does; she’ll be defiant until the last. 

 

“My name is Karen Page,” she tells them, though she knows they know this. She dug too deep, she pressed too hard. A story that she couldn’t let die. She had to get to the end of it, she had to figure out why women kept disappearing and no one was caring. But now she’s here, broken and bloody. 

 

“Karen Page, so fucking what?” His accent is heavy and his tone indifferent. He thinks her nothing more than an upstart journalist. A girl who he can cow. And she did get sloppy, she got too eager to get this lead. But she’s not going to flinch at what’s coming. 

 

“You should have done your fucking research on me like I did on you,” she hisses and the crack of his hand across her cheek makes her gasp for breath. She doesn’t see stars; she sees skulls. Two black eyes and the darkness between them. She laughs then, well aware that it makes her seem unhinged. The men stare at her, unsure of what to do with her.

 

“Don’t,” one stops the other when he raises a gun to aim it at Karen’s face. She watches them, eyes darting between the two. She’s not scared. She has faith. She knows something they don’t. She knows him. 

 

When the shots start, Karen doesn’t scream. She doesn’t gasp when the men in front of her drop, groaning in the agony of their bullet wounds. Through the smoke, the gunfire, the horror, she sits and waits, watching. 

 

He comes from nowhere and everywhere all at once, with his guns and his fury. The zip ties bite into Karen’s wrists, even more so when a shot goes off and clips his shoulder. She lunges forward, trying to get to him, but she knows it will take more than a glorified scratch to stop him. He’s jumped in front of bullets and bombs for her, literally, and this doesn’t even register for him. 

 

Still, the fear for him in a firefight is as cold as an edge of the dagger to her throat. The fear hasn’t started until now, until it is her fault that he’s in danger. There is relief, sure, because he is here and that means that she’s safe, but first he has to kill the men who stole her, and do so before they kill him. One against many, yet still, when the dust settles, there is one man on his feet, turning slowly to look at her. 

 

“I….”  Karen tries to say something, anything, but words aren’t good enough. They’re never good enough. He keeps doing this, saving her, coming for her, protecting her. She hates that she loves it. She hates that there’s a part of her that is fearless because of him. She hates that she is nearly untouchable, not by her own capabilities but his, the man they all fear.

 

But if there’s one thing she doesn’t hate, it’s him. She knows there’s another word for this feeling, but she can’t dwell on it. Not yet.

 

“Jesus fuck….” He mutters it like it’s a damnation of her, but the way he comes towards her is not with anger, it is with fear. His hands, so steady on the trigger, shake now. Shake like leaves in the wind and they don’t stop trembling until they are on her, wound up in her hair, on her neck, on her battered face. 

 

“I’m _okay_ , it’s okay,” she whispers to him but he doesn’t hear her. Or he doesn’t believe her, more like. She knows how bad she looks. And she knows him, she knows that he will never accept her word for it, not until he has the chance to inspect each and every wound himself. 

 

“Fucking…. _Are_ _you_ _fucking_ …. Goddamn….” The words are half lost to her. He’s here now, so she doesn’t have to be so brave. The darkness is coming, sweet and oblivious, so she reaches for it, letting it envelope her. “Karen, **Karen** , stay with me Karen, _please_ , Karen, no—”

 

She lets it all go, because his arms are around her and that is enough. 

 

When she wakes, she’s in a bed. Her head is killing her, like it’s been split open from front to back, and her whole side aches like she’s been bent in two, but she is warm and somewhere soft. She knows where she is before she even opens her eyes. When she does, she looks for him anyways. 

 

He’s at her bedside, head bent and resting on his hands. They’re clasped, almost as if in prayer, but she knows better. He doesn’t answer to any god. She’s been cleaned up, the blood wiped off her skin, though her clothes remain on. He never takes any liberties. He never pushes. So it’s her that reaches out to him, her fingertips grazing his forearm gently. 

 

“Hey,” she whispers and his face snaps up to look at her. The grimace on his face is enough to shatter her heart to pieces. There’s an expression he has, one that she’s seen only a couple times before. It is heartbreak, plain and simple. He wears it in his deep, dark eyes, radiating pain and devastation. He wears it in his mouth, twisting downwards and fighting the twitching of his lips. He wears it in his entire body, the way he is screaming out for her and reins himself in because he believes his bloody hands cannot touch something like her without leaving stains. 

 

“What hurts?” He asks instantly, because that’s all he can think about right now. Her pain, and nothing else. 

 

“It’s okay,” she tells him, trying to sit up and biting back a groan. It’s the wrong thing to do, judging by the way he lurches forward and his hands go for her. He stops when she gasps, and her regret is for the fact that he did falter. She’s hurt but she’s more bothered that still, even here, even after everything, he doesn’t think he can reach for her. She’s the one who takes his hands, catching them and holding them tightly. 

 

“You—” he starts, but she cuts him off, putting both his hands on her face. The bruises protest, but she doesn’t care. She remembers the way that he’d cradled her head, ever so carefully, when he’d found her in that chair. She wants that back and she doesn’t want to have to nearly die for it. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she tells him and his eyes are on her, wild and searching. She watches him, seeing the emotions play out. She’s seen so much footage of him, him murdering people, him giving confessions, him on trial, but it is only with her that she sees this much honesty from him. “I’m sorry I made you come for me.” 

 

“You gotta stop doin’ this stuff, Karen,” he tells her, and it's the way he says her name, so low and deep, like the rumble of a coming storm, like one of his guns, stones grinding together. It does something to her when he says her name like that; it makes the hair on her neck stand up and her toes curl. 

 

“They were taking women, they were taking them and no one even noticed, it was—” she tries to tell him, but he is shaking his head. His hair is a little longer than she’d seen it last, a little more floppy. The beard is threatening a comeback, a few days worth of growth. She wonders if it is because he’s been worried for her. 

 

“They were dangerous fuckin’ men Karen, did you not think for a **goddamn** **second** that—”

 

“I thought that there were missing women, and I _owed_ it to them to—“

 

“Owed them? Owed them? Owed them what, your fuckin’ life, Karen, that’s—”

 

“Someone needed to look for them, no one else was!” 

 

“Oh, yeah, course, so it just had to be you?” 

 

“Yes!” She bursts and they both fall silent, staring at each other. Then he looks away from her, shoulders falling and it’s like something inside of him has broken a little, snapped just enough to release the tension. He lets go of her face but she manages to keep one hand in hers. “I didn’t mean to make you do that. I didn’t mean for you to have to…. Rescue me. I am sorry.” 

 

“It’s not that, Karen,” something in his voice is broken, cracking, but he won’t raise his eyes to look at her. That may be for the best. She’s sure that if he looks up at her, she’ll drown in all that he is. She’ll see his void and she’ll lose herself in it with him. “It’s you. You know what it’s like, seeing you there, in that damned chair? You know what that feels like?” 

 

“I do,” she responds, a bit of a snap in her voice. “You think I haven’t seen the footage, huh? Of you and, and, and Rawlins! I saw that, _I saw you_. You were dead, dead on that floor!” 

 

“I wasn’t,” he mutters, but with no conviction. She’d heard the story from Dinah, when she visited her in the hospital after it all. “It’s different. I can take a beating.”

 

“And I can’t?” She asks icily and that is enough to stop him. That’s enough to make him raise his head so that he looks at her, enough that his thumb idly slides across her bruised knuckles like he’s not even thinking about it. Because he knows. He knows her, knows her past, knows who she is. 

 

“Fuck,” he pulls his hands away from hers and buries his face in them. He rubs the back of his head and she wants to be the one drawing him into her arms but she can’t. She can’t. Not now. 

 

“Listen,” she murmurs, flinching when she tries to sit up further. He watches her with so much concern it’s like he’s willing her pain to be transferred on to him, so that he might carry it instead of her. “Listen to me. I didn’t mean for it to happen like this.”

 

What had she meant? She’d seen him only once before this, once since he’d been pronounced dead yet again. How many times could a man die without being dead? It had only been a brief encounter; he’d stopped by the coffee shop outside her offices and she’d spotted him, holding back a tremulous smile. They’d only said a couple words; him reassuring her he was alright, she telling him that she wouldn’t get into any trouble. Now here she is, injured and breaking promises. 

 

“I don’t care that you were tryin’ to do something,” he tells her, voice low and broken. “I know that’s you, all heart, that’s what you are. Can’t change that, never would try anyways. This is who you are, I know that. I care that you go off and get…. Hurt!” 

 

“This wasn’t your fault,” she changes direction when she sees the way his hands are trembling again. “I didn’t get into this because of you, I did it because of me. You’re not the one who dragged me into this. You were the one who got me out.”

 

“Karen,” he looks up at her and this time she does lean forward, ignoring how her side screams in protest against it. She manages to reach his face, holding his chin so that he keeps his gaze locked with hers. 

 

“You are the thing that saves me,” she promises him, a bit of eagerness slipping into her voice before she can stop it. “Not what condemns me.” 

 

“You’re hurt,” he stands, ending all contact and she’s left adrift. “C’mon, I can help you shower.” 

 

“Alright,” she bends so he won’t break, and lets him help her up. He leaves her alone in the bathroom once the shower is hot. His little apartment is functional, but lacks any personal touches. She uses a white bar of soap to wash herself clean, a grey towel to dry herself, and a black teeshirt to cover herself up. It’s one of his, clearly, soft from use and large. She takes stock of herself in the mirror; bruised ribs, a bloodied and cracked lip, a cheekbone swelled up to the size of a grape, and a ring of purplish-green around one eye. She’s had worse. When she limps into his little kitchen, his back is to her. 

 

“If you’re hungry, food is there,” he says gruffly, without turning. There’s soup, still steaming, in bowls on the counter. She eases herself onto a stool and picks a spoon up. It’s hot, so hot she nearly has to let it fall back into the bowl. If he hears her hiss of pain, he says nothing. 

 

“I can go,” she offers, when it’s clear that he’s doing nothing but busying himself so that he won’t have to turn around and face her. 

 

“Door’s there,” he grumbles, without turning and she wants to scream or yell or cry, perhaps anything to stop from having to go off silently into the night. She wants to cling so tightly to him that she can erase some of the loneliness that radiates off him like heat. 

 

“Then I guess I need to say thank you before I go, since you saved me,” she says quietly. “Again.” 

 

“You know that’s not how it is,” he speaks, hands gripping tightly to the edge of the counter, tension in every line of his back. 

 

“It is. I would’ve died there if you hadn’t came,” she’s goading him now, but it’s all she has left. “They would’ve killed me, they would’ve kept beating me until I stopped breathing, until I—”

 

“Goddamnit Karen!” He roars, turning around and throwing the towel on the ground. Rage is in his eyes, but not the rage that sparks his murderous moments. It's the sort of rage he throws up against a wall of pain, against the thing that threatens to drag him down and drown him. Rage against his fear, against what would threaten to topple him from this tiny little stronghold he’s managed to build. Tear down his walls. 

 

She stares up at him, unafraid. She remembers something she told herself as a young woman, when she was trying to move away from it all. Five seconds of insane courage, that is all she needs. Five seconds of madness, and then she could see where she landed. So she takes a deep breath and crosses the void between him and her. 

 

Her arms always seem so skinny when they go around him. He’s a wall of muscle, and for a moment she understands the fear men must have when they see him coming. He has no softness to him, none at all, until his hands come up around her as well and one cradles the back of her head like she is the most delicate thing his hands have ever held while the other is between her shoulder blades, pressing her all the tighter to him. 

 

She buries her face in the crook of his neck and breathes him in. He is solid and whole, and most importantly, here. He’s not bleeding, at least not enough to put him at risk of bleeding out. He’s got his arms around her and he’s holding so tightly to her she half wonders if they are ever going to let each other go. She hopes not. She wants to stay right here, where things are good and safe. Where they are whole and together. 

 

When they finally pull away, it is a slow thing. She runs her hands across his back, across his shaved head, across his broad shoulders. Down his arms, stopping at the wrists and holding them so that when she looks up at him, he can’t pull away. He’s gazing down on her, honest and true. No pain. No fear. No rage. Just something that might have been hope, if she’d cared to name it. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, this time not even sure what for. For violating boundaries, for pushing him too far, for upsetting their fragile whatever this is. 

 

“Don’t,” the word is half strangled, but he says it all the same. “Don’t be.” 

 

“I knew you would come for me,” she whispers, going to wrap her arms around his neck and bringing his forehead down to touch hers. It reminds her of the smell of blood on cold steel, but this is not then. They are home. They are safe. “I told them that you were coming. I knew you would. I knew you would.”

 

“I'm always gonna come for you,” he replies, closing his eyes. Those words too, call back to that day and so she pulls him closer. 

 

“You have always been my salvation, Frank Castle, never my damnation,” she tells him and he looks down at her. The look in his dark eyes is about to set her on fire and this is the moment that will change everything, her instincts are telling her. 

 

Then he begins to lower his head. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please, please, please give feedback. Like I said, this is strictly a one-shot, but if I have any ideas, there might be a longer fic coming! It's my first venture into these two, so let me know how I did!


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